Even as geneticists like Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky were revealing the genetic mechanisms that constrain how living things evolve, Thompson was revealing the constraints and opportunities afforded to living things by physics and chemistry. Crudely put, genetics explains why dogs, say, look like other dogs. Thompson did something different: he glimpsed why dogs look the way they do.

The basic chemical and structural components of vision existed long before it evolved. Something happened to make eyes viable, although the exact nature of that innovation remains mysterious. But once visual information meant something, there was no stopping it – or life. For with vision comes locomotion, predation, complex behaviour, and, ultimately, consciousness.for New Scientist, 3 August, 2016

Today it is a truth universally acknowledged that computer languages have a shelf-life slightly less than that of an unrefrigerated yogurt; for nearly 30 years, Dawkins’s cyberworld has lain dormant, for want of a machine to run it.for New Scientist, 10 June 2016